


The making of John Smith

by ars_belli



Category: The Man in the High Castle (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Heydrich is a walking trigger warning, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Period-Typical Racism, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 12:06:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6283894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/pseuds/ars_belli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his duel of wits with Reinhard Heydrich, everything points to John Smith having won.  He doesn't even need an admission of Heydrich's guilt: Smith has the support of the Führer, Wegener's confession, and a prisoner too injured to run.  Check-mate is but one move away for this model of an American SS general.</p><p>Heydrich has one move left as well.</p><p>(<b>Spoilers for most of S1</b>, attempts to fix the plot holes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The making of John Smith

The dying man was a legend made flesh. John Smith rubbed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, drained the cold, bitter dregs of his sixth coffee. Whether it was night or day mattered only to the limitations of his own body, how much exhaustion it could withstand before melting like iron in a forge. He rolled his ankles, a futile gesture against the partisan warfare of pins and needles. His neck ached from reading at such an odd angle, with his papers balanced in the crook of one arm and his other hand alternating between page-turning and resting on his holstered Luger. Every so often he watched the watchmen, two non-commissioned officers from his own Section, selected as much for their personal loyalty as their of lack of loyalty to anything else. No debts to be paid; no family to be executed; no friends but their colleagues. Should any unpleasantness occur, their MG-60s would take ample care of it. In any case, it would give Smith enough time to shoot himself, or Heydrich, or both. He didn't dare leave the prisoner alone. All he had to do was wait, while the heart monitor beat out his destiny in four-four time.  


Standing was still possible. Smith collected the papers from his lap into his briefcase, locked it and handcuffed it to his wrist. His off-hand wrist, of course, not his shooting arm. Heydrich's war records lurked inside the case, waiting to be read. One from the RSHA and another from the Luftwaffe. It was almost amusing, that Himmler and Göring had blithely let him slither up the ranks and sown the seeds of their own destruction. Later, later… He could build a profile without the man's achievements for the Reich. The man's personal dossier certainly contained enough! The Obergruppenführer's strides covered the hospital room swiftly, summarising with every step. Physical fitness: skiing, boxing, equestrian, swimming, fencing. The file took a masochistic delight in mentioning his custom to swim in the North Sea even in winter and a petulant rage at being dropped from the Olympic fencing team in '36 because no-one was willing to guarantee his safety. Smith met the bland, off-white hospital wall and executed a right turn. Languages: fluency in German, English, French, Russian, Polish and Czech—the last three now dead languages, thanks to Heydrich in no small part. Wall. Left turn. Culture: the composer's son eschewed marching songs and martial Wagner in preference of the now-banned _Parsifal_ and _Ariadne auf Naxos_ (and was rumoured to have a live recording, sung by no less than the Führer's favourite tenor). Heydrich was a violinist worthy of any concert hall, but Smith had only ever heard him play the piano. Wall. Right turn. Sexual proclivities: heterophilic. How tactful. (Scrawled in the margin: "The only woman in Berlin whom the boss has yet to seduce is the statue of Victory on the Brandenburg Gate.") The Führer had bequeathed him the epithet of "The Man with the Iron Heart." Perhaps the Führer had been wrong: this was no man at all, but Mephistopheles made flesh and blood. Wall, left turn, slow exhale. Mostly blood, he had learned. Five litres of the stuff, of which at least three had spurted over the pair of them through the trek from the hunting lodge to a clearing large enough for the SS-VT to land, let alone during the rocket flight to the Reich Rehabilitation Centre. Yet the Führer wanted his traitor alive, so live he would. At least there was no evidence-bearing bullet to dig out: the high-powered rifle round had blown a fifty-pfennig-piece hole through Heydrich's bicep, shattering his arm bone along the way, ploughed straight through the wall and had been found in a nearby tree. The Hauptsturmführer who had brought him a clean uniform and service pistol had reported that the bullet had been conveniently misplaced during analysis. Wall. To hell with the right turn! His palm smacked into the concrete restlessly. The same analysis which it was his duty to report to _Reichsführer-SS_ Himmler as soon as it was proof-read. Smith fought the urge to rub his eyes. What to do with Himmler? Give him the same report as the Führer, or the credible fiction that the pair of them had been attacked by the Resistance? Smith set his jaw and turned. He stared blearily at the motionless figure in the bed, as if the answer was hidden in that funeral mask of a face, all marble-pale angles like the statues of Apollo in the Museum of Ancient Art.

The god's eyes flickered open. At least they were unchanging, a vivid turquoise that cut like a blade drawn in the night. There was little left of the flaxen hair which Smith remembered. The high forehead had not been left unlined by the ravages of time (not conscience, never with this man). John Smith prised himself from the wall and walked to Heydrich's bedside. He extracted the handcuffs from his uniform pocket.  
"Expecting me to play the piano, are you?" the God whispered.  
Despite himself, Smith's lips twitched into a smile. Heydrich stared at the ceiling, not even deigning to spare a glance at his once-colleague.  
"You remember that wager?"  
"Whatever you could play, I could play with hands cuffed behind my back? That's not a wager, _Obergruppenführer_ , it's a party trick."  
"Rachmaninov's Third, wasn't it?"  
"God, was it? How…uncultured."  
Heydrich hissed softly between his teeth.  
"Was I drunk?" he asked, with the carelessness of a lesser man asking "Was I good?"  
"No worse off than I was. I certainly remember the performance: as demonic as it was flawless," Smith reassured him.  
It had been, too. Not that anyone would dare attach their name to witnessing such cultural treachery, especially not from a man who had personally helped to wipe Mother Russia from the face of the planet.  
"I seem to recall…" he rasped, trailing off.  
The eyes flickered shut. The Obergruppenführer replaced the handcuffs and poured his prisoner a glass of water instead. Heydrich swallowed obediently. His eyes opened.  
"I seem to recall, that when you were drunk, John, you used to sing—"  
"— _Göring only has one ball and Hitler's they are very small, and Himmler, he has something similar!_ You put me undercover in that resistance cell, then I couldn't get their damn song out of my head," he admitted.  
The briefcase weighed on his wrist. Nothing was small talk, not with Heydrich.  
"There was a verse about Rommel, too," he ventured. " _Rommel, had four or five, I guess. No on, is sure 'bout Rudolf Hess._ "  
"Our _Wüstenfuchs_ is retired," pointed out Heydrich.  
Calmly. Mockingly. Utterly secure in his belief that no-one else was capable of ruling the _Grossdeutsches Reich_ after the Führer. The Obergruppenführer felt the betrayal slide around his gut as if he had crushed the glass and swallowed the shards. Instead he merely held it to his superior's lips again.  
"You have a strange way of apologising, _Herr Obergruppenführer_. Thrice I spared your life! Look how you've repaid me."  
Smith felt his eyebrows flee to the crown of his skull. He fought them down again. He was the "big, bad wolf" as Thomas said, afraid of nothing, devoid of fear or pity or any other human weakness. The pain-bright thought of his son twisted his chest like a knife through the ribs.  
"We must be glad that _Hauptsturmführer_ Connolly committed suicide when he did. Otherwise I might never have been able to repay you."  
"Ah, yes. I hope that he shared his burdens with someone before he died."  
"My aide takes the mental and physical condition of his subordinates very seriously. In confidence, you understand, but under these circumstances…"  
"I am certain that our _Reichsführer_ will persuade him to leave a written statement. The grieving widow too, perhaps his children?"  
Smith nodded. Connolly's family spared in exchange for pretending that he hadn't been Heydrich's mole. Let the Oberstgruppenführer think that he was so tender hearted to agree to it! Either way, Smith's tracks were covered after his spur of the moment action. His usual calculations had been marred by righteous fury, but it had been the correct move. Certainly not an enjoyable one. There was only the satisfaction of attacking, when he had been on the defensive from the moment Heydrich had entered his office, voice dripping with contempt. He let the rage warm his veins a little, driving him out of his torpor.  
"Coffee," he yawned.  
A smile slithered across Heydrich's lips.  
"The cup that broke the camel's back, hmm?"  
"Quite," Smith agreed.  
Rounds one and two were his, John Smith decided. It was time to call Himmler and find out whether he was part of Heydrich's little coup.  


"The _Reichsführer_ will be here shortly—"  
He broke off, Walther out of his holster before he had even completed the pivot to face the door. At least the nurse had the grace to look as startled as he felt.  
" _Herr Reichsprotektor, Herr Obergruppenführer_ , I'm sorry for the intrusion!"  
Blood glinted wetly along his catheter as Heydrich beckoned her in.  
" _Doch kein Problem, gnadiges Fraülein,_ " he murmured.  
"Please stop moving that arm, _Herr Reichsprotecktor_ , or you'll dislodge the needle."  
"Perhaps the _Obergruppenführer_ here ought to handcuff my wrists," he joked.  
Smith watched a blush stain the nurse's cheeks.  
"Well, I would hardly be able to object…"  
"In your professional opinion, I am certain," he remarked dryly.  
She bit her lip. Hastily, she turned away and busied herself with the injections on the steel tray.  
"Erythropoietin?" Heydrich asked lazily.  
He bit the inside of his cheek fiercely. Now was not the time to linger on how the words slid from Heydrich's full lips, nor how effortlessly his silver tongue had shaped the vowels. He dragged his attention to the nurse instead. She wore the deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression of anyone faced with Heydrich at close range. Did the slight dilation of her pupils herald anything sinister? Her fingers lingered an inch or two above the needle. Was that guilt or surprise? Smith exhaled, and the world set itself into motion again.  
"Ah, no, _Herr Reichsprotecktor_. This one is granulocyte colony stimulating factor and the next is granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor. For the white blood cells. Erythropoietin stimulates the red," she added.  
Whether the fractional nod was assent or comprehension, the nurse continued the injections. Only Smith caught the subtle, slight relaxation of Heydrich's shoulders. Something else to add to his obsessive catalogue of this hero of the Reich. How many precious minutes had he wasted as Heydrich's aide, dreaming that one day he would sit behind the most important desk in America? One day it would be Heydrich on his knees, mind clouded and will drained, while Smith guided his superior's hands to slide along the wool of his uniform and knotted his fingers in the blond hair to tilt that persuasive mouth exactly as he liked— Never. He tasted blood. Not this weakness, never in front of anyone, let alone _him_. He blinked. In the time it had taken him to regain his senses, the nurse had left.  
"Yes, that was a real nurse. No, I'm not going to drug, poison or torture you."  
"Not until the Führer decides what to do with me, at any rate. To think, you used to carry out the _Führer_ 's orders with such zeal!"  
"I swore an oath," he snapped.  
Smith changed the subject, refusing to allow his prisoner to dictate terms.  
" _Reichsprotektor_ ," he mused. "They still remember you here."  
"I should expect so," the traitor agreed.  
_No-one will torture him. No-one will have the courage._ That was all it came down to, whether Smith's cunning and loyalty and skill might prove more persuasive to his subordinates than the remorseless, infamous reign of the first ruler of the American province of the _Reich_. Thus, the matter narrowed to a duel of wits: the master and the pupil. Therein lay the question: in their previous encounters, had John Smith lost, or had he submitted willingly?  
"I should expect that Heinrich remembers my service as well," Heydrich continued.  
_Himmler._ Not a man whom Smith knew, surely giving his opponent the upper hand. Unless, unless Himmler tired of his protégé. Now that Heydrich was one of the four _Oberstgruppenführern_ in the _Grossdeutsches Reich_ , it might very well be possible to convince his superior that the man was getting too close to his own rank for comfort.

Why, even when John Smith had been a lowly _Hauptsturmführer_ , _Obergruppenführer_ Heydrich could do as he pleased. All too often, what had pleased him was John Smith, draped over Heydrich's desk like a sacrifice over an altar. He had learned more about power in those fleeting moments of clarity than in the thousand interrogations since. Smith didn't care what his superior did to him, whether it his was eyes or his cock that wept, as long as he had more of it, until he _begged_ Heydrich to do things to him. Anything, everything, things that John Smith would never have dreamed of doing even to the lowliest scum in the Resistance. Even his decadence served a purpose, on the nights when Smith was whipped to the edge of senselessness. Heydrich knew exactly when to dull the longing in a sea of champagne and silken sheets, having prised apart the pieces of John Smith just enough to reconfigure them in a more pleasing manner. He knew exactly when to restore his _Hauptsturmführer_ to screaming consciousness by rubbing lemon juice into his wounds, before shoving him into the winter, praying for the cold to numb his wounds and his self-loathing, too ashamed to crawl back to the warm embraces of his wife. Very occasionally, his superior would wash his back in cognac instead, pressing glass after glass of bloodied brandy to his lips, until Smith's skin was flushed and his bones melted from the heat and he was nothing but an object to be shaped under the guidance of Heydrich's hands and the thrust of his hips. Any SD officer could shatter a man like a pocket watch under a warhammer, but precious few could land his blows with such gentle precision that it might be reassembled again. God knew, he had tried! How easily had Icarus thought himself to be Daedalus's equal! He had seen the success of his mentor with every glance in his shaving-mirror, greedily seizing his own chance when it came, heedless of the consequences of failure. For he had failed. Joe Blake was now an enemy of the state, a fugitive to be shot on sight. Should his handler not have anticipated this? Then again, Heydrich had not seen his protégé's own betrayal. Perhaps Heydrich was Icarus after all. He had overreached, yes, but his name would live on forever. Was he himself merely Daedalus, cast into obscurity for the crime of not daring enough? It would have been so easy. Why hadn't he sought out Joe's company? Had the dozen footsteps in his own house made a coward of him? He might have put his pupil's hero worship to better use, crushing any feelings for this Resistance woman as well. But Rudolph Wegener had given him a taste for such power and he had already betrayed his old friend once that night.  


"How is Wegener?" Heydrich asked, as if reading his thoughts with that blade-sharp stare.  
"Dead," Smith supplied. "Suicide."  
The _Oberstgruppenführer_ hissed between his teeth. Smith bore the force of his glare as if the entire botched assassination were his fault. Perhaps it had been. Perhaps Erich had sent the letter after all.  
"I ought to have sent someone with more spine. You, for instance."  
"Never," John Smith laughed.  
"You do have a certain skill at improvising under pressure."  
Smith resumed his pacing of the featureless room. There wasn't even a portrait of the _Führer_ to keep Heydrich company. Of all people, Reinhard would have appreciated the irony.  
"Was that a compliment, _Herr Oberstgruppenführer_?"  
"Merely an accurate assessment of your last undercover mission," Heydrich feinted.  
Smith braced himself to counter the attack.  
"It was very undercover, was it not?"  
"You were the one who sent me to seduce the leader of the New York resistance."  
The moment the words escaped his lips, Smith knew that it was the wrong move.  
"I explicitly instructed you not to do so—"  
"—Reverse psychology is such a fine interrogation technique—"  
"—So you spent three years wearing someone else's face and personality and habits, for, what, the domesticity? Did you enjoy betraying all her friends by day and babysitting her bastard son by night? Pity about the sex you had to endure in-between."  
He examined the featureless concrete wall, searching for anything to delay the turn, the pacing back into Heydrich'a orbit.  
"I did wonder why she never suspected. The grieving widow of the Resistance leader continued his battles and just _happened_ to find an eager disciple with the spitting image of her executed lover."  
"Ah well, we're all disposed to see what we want, are we not?" countered Heydrich dryly.  
"I didn't enjoy killing her, you know," he confessed.  
"You could always have shot her."  
He turned away from the figure in the bed.  
"I didn't want you to imagine that I was putting her out of her misery."  
"A fine excuse," Heydrich murmured. "You tired of being someone you were not."  
"Perhaps we are alike after all!"  
That shard of defiance loosened his boots from the floor, just enough to move away.  
"Have you forgotten? Your hands knotted in her hair and you shoved her under the water, and no matter how hard she fought, you kept her under, even when breaking her neck would have been simpler. More merciful."  
He had never felt so powerless. Then or now, Smith realised.  
"Did it hurt?" Heydrich enquired carelessly.  
"We all pay a price for our sins."  
Of course it had hurt. What else would have made him go to Heydrich and—and—  


He had never felt so powerful, afterwards. It ought to have ashamed him, being reduced to an undignified tangle of limbs on the Chesterfield, unable to utter anything beyond _please_ and _more_. It ought to have hurt, while Heydrich's muscles crushed him effortlessly into the worn leather. Yet none of it had mattered, while Heydrich's medals pressed new scars into his skin, with his idol writhing above him in delight. He would never forget.  
"How many lives?" Heydrich had asked, afterwards.  
"She has a son," he had ventured. "Joe. He can barely walk, let alone understand."  
"Dead boys don't seek vengeance."  
"Their families do," he had objected.  
He had felt Heydrich's nails scrape lightly on the back of his neck. _Not if you kill them too._ He had felt, rather than seen, the smile of cold amusement lightly pressed against his dark curls.  
"The family name may prove useful—provided he can be brought up a fine National Socialist—the Resistance would welcome him with open arms," Heydrich had mused. "Who else?"  
"Edmund."  
Surely he dared too much! He rested his cheek against the spymaster's clavicle, barely daring to breathe.  
"Edmund," repeated his superior. "The brother-in-law."  
"Joe needs a good, National Socialist home. Why not with Edmund Smith?" he had suggested recklessly.  
"And when is Edmund Smith going to confess that his so-called son is not Joe Smith after all?" his superior had mused.  
Flushed with victory, his aide had never hesitated.  
"He won't. We'll recruit him when he comes of age. _I_ will recruit him."  
The Man with the Iron Heart never laughed, but very rarely, he threatened to do so.  
"Look at you," he had mused. "Besotted."  
"And terrified. Awe-struck and besotted and terrified," he agreed.  
He had kissed Heydrich's fingers. They clamped around his jaw in revenge.  
"Want would you do for me, John?"  
"Anything," he had replied guilelessly. "Anything at all."  
Smith tore himself from his naive idolatry and went to meet the _Reichsführer-SS_.  


The _Reichsführer-SS_ handed him a typed telephone number. France, that was all Smith was able to glean. He pocketed it, longing for the resolve to tear the note to shreds in full view of Heydrich. It made no matter: his training would force him to recall the number. Eventually his will would crumble and he would long a little too much for his daughters's cheerful prattle or his son's dutiful achievements. There was Helen, of course…  
"You appear to trust me as little as when we first met," Himmler stated.  
He paused, cataloguing the _Obergruppenführer_ 's achievements from a glance at his rank bars.  
"The first time I saw you in that uniform, you were glowing from your transfer."  
"I must have looked positively radioactive, _mein Reichsführer_."  


On his last day in KZ Cincinnati his more senior officers had seethed. _Kommandant_ Mohnke had smiled thinly, savouring Smith's blind naiveté. Rudolph had laughed and sent him a catalogue of funeral caskets. New York had beckoned him in with light and sound and colour and he had thrown himself into the lion's den with aplomb. Why, there was even a formal reception on his first night on duty. A trap, of course. This being Heydrich, the real trap was already sprung. He had taken the risk of changing into mess dress before reporting in: the rocket had been late, the queue of junior officers scrambling to change in the lavatories had made him later, but at least he looked the part, instead of wandering into the Reichsprotektor's office in battledress and stubble. Reichsprotektor Heydrich had also been running behind schedule. Or at least that had been his first conscious thought, a good several seconds after entering the office. His first unconscious thought had been about the scars.  
"An oath of loyalty to the Reich," the Reichsprotektor had called them, having caught his new aide staring.  
Heydrich had had the Teutonic severity of form which made embarrassment over one's naked body not only unnecessary but tasteless. Even the imperfections had made him seem more perfect—a spiderweb of tissue on his firm arse marking that first grenade in Prague; a jagged fault-line over the right abdominal from a knife in the night in Tripoli; a crater above the left shoulder-blade, memorial to a slain driver and a car bomb in Paris—surely he was nearly as immortal as the Führer! Concealing it, even in his Obergruppenführer's mess dress with its panopoly of medals, seemed a waste. As he ran a final check over his aide's uniform in the full-length mirror, Heydrich stood behind him so close that he could feel the cold radiating from his superior, close enough to kiss, to fuck, to reach around and re-knot his bow tie with such precise hands that the sight made his heart beat just a little too fast.  


"One can hardly blame you, with the Reichsprotektor decimating his staff on your first evening."  
The soft voice of the Reichsfuührer-SS dragged him back to the present.  
"It's such a waste, _mein Reichsführer_. I just don't understand it. Loyal for thirty years and then—"  
He spread his hands slightly, aiming to reassure his superior that he held no ulterior motive. Himmler's thin shoulders lifted in a non-committal motion. The restraint of it prickled along Smith's spine.  
"Loyal to himself…"  
Whether the remark was intended for him or not, Smith noted it. There was no love lost between these two, which gave him a glimmer of hope. He followed Himmler into the sterile ward.  
"Let us begin with the assassination attempt," the _Reichsführer_ instructed curtly.  
"Which one?" Heydrich asked, words shadowed in mirth.  
"The Resistance actions against _Obergruppenführer_ Smith and _Hauptsturmführer_ Lautz. Would either of you care to explain why Lautz died and Smith survived?"  
Heydrich beckoned. He refused to move any closer.  
"If I wanted Lautz killed, why was I so careless?" he supplied. "A natural death would have been preferable."  
"Careless, _Obergruppenführer_? That would be uncharacteristic," Himmler observed dryly.  
The smile in Heydrich's eyes did not disturb the thin line of his mouth. _The silence of the ignorant looks like wisdom._ Smith held his tongue with an effort of will.  
"Must I answer for my wayward pupil? Very well: a natural death would never draw me out."  
"Nor any of the assassinations," Smith pointed out. "Lautz, my aide, my drivers, such minor ranks."  
"Unlike an _Obergruppenführer_ ," Heydrich agreed.  
"Who survived, sadly for your theory, Heydrich. Against four opponents with Thompson machine pistols. Most commendable," Himmler noted.  
"Remarkable, _mein Reichsführer_ ," Heydrich said dryly. "They must have been the most incompetent assassins in the entire Reich."  
"Where is your evidence that Smith arranged for his attackers to let him go?" the _Reichsführer-SS_ asked.  
"Come now, I would have trained him badly if there were any!"  
_How convenient,_ said Himmler's raised eyebrow.  
"What about Connolly?" the _Reichsführer-SS_ probed.  
"I must have killed him too," Heydrich snapped. "Most embarrassing should anyone discover that the Resistance had a mole in the SS."  
His superior's gaze lingered. Smith tried to stare at the reflections glinting from Himmler's pince-nez instead of the man himself. It was his cue, but Heydrich had trapped him neatly, given him motive and opportunity. He felt peculiarly faint. That was the caffeine, of course, SS generals weren't permitted to fear. He altered his attack to compensate.  
"What about the hunting trip?" he asked.  
Heydrich's smile cut.  
"What about it?" asked Himmler. "The Resistance took a few shots at you and your guest, they might very well have followed the car for all you know."  
"My guest? _My guest_?"  
"I told you that ought to have brought your son along, did I not?"  
"Shall we keep our families out of this, Reinhard?"  
The _Reichsführer_ 's precise lips tightened.  
" _Outside_ ," he hissed. "Do not ever lie to me again, _Obergruppenführer_."  
Smith dutifully left the room, bracing for the coming storm.  


He closed his eyes. The telephone number lingered behind his eyelids. Smith blinked furiously. A less sentimental man would return to Himmler and his protégé and their barely-disguised shouting match. Nodding at the pair of guards on duty, he headed down the corridor to the nurse's station and the telephone. The connection was nearly as rudimentary as his French. If Himmler had given him a false trail, then he was part of the coup. If he hadn't, that proved nothing either way, leaving the decision to an instinct tuned and sharpened by the very man who had betrayed him. Betrayed the Reich. The foreign dial tone buzzed wasp-like in his ears.  
"Father! Father! I met Joachim Peiper!" Thomas laughed. "The hero of Bastogne! Can you imagine?"  
"Thomas!" he croaked.  
He wanted to say something, anything to forestall the tears of relief.  
"I hope you didn't pester the man for his autograph," he scolded.  
"No, I think Mother was too busy…ah…pestering him. You know, the _Reichsführer-SS_ is Peiper's father-in-law? He has all the gossip from Berlin."  
"Speaking of your mother, if you can drag her away for just a moment…"  
Thomas yelled for Helen without moving the receiver at his end. It nearly blew Smith's head off.  
"Hoping to enrol in the Kreigsmarine, Thomas?"  
"Sorry, Father. I wager that I can yell from one end of _Bismarck_ to the other with my lungs."  
His father forced out a laugh. The pride of the Reich's battleships was due to dock in three months. Would Thomas be well enough to see it? He shook his head, aware that his son was talking again.  
"I just—before Mother comes—I don't think the girls understood what happened, but I have to _know_."  
His voice dropped to a whisper.  
"What did you do? Of all the Party bigwigs you could have offended, why the Man with the Iron Heart? Mother nearly shot us all!"  
He closed his eyes.  
"Thomas, listen to me. Do you still have my spare pistol?"  
"Yes," his son whispered furiously.  
"Get a shoulder holster from one of the Leibstandarte, keep the pistol with you and your eyes and ears open. Don't let your sisters out of your sight. And for God's sake, don't tell Helen—"  
"Are we ever going to see you again?" Thomas blurted.  
There were a dozen responses he could make, but nothing suitable for an open line.  
"The _Führer_ knows my loyalty to the _Reich_. You'll all just have to wait until it's safe."  
Thomas made an indistinct noise.  
"Girls, you can talk to Father if you tell me where Mother is, OK?"  
Despite the static, he heard a familiar scuffle as his daughters quarrelled over the telephone.  
"Papa, Thomas said that Mother had a surprise for us!"  
"No, idiot! Mama said she had a surprise if we closed our eyes and opened our mouths like the clowns at the fair, but Thomas offered to help. He wanted his surprise last!" burbled his youngest.  
"Now we're in France and she's forgotten!" wailed her sister.  
The air in his throat had thickened like the porridge rations in the concentration camp.  
"Your…surprise…will just have to wait until you come home. You're on a nice, long holiday—"  
"—Aren't you coming too?—"  
"—while your father sorts out some of his problems at work. I'll be there in no time, don't worry."  
His knuckles had gone white on the telephone receiver. He swallowed convulsively.  
"John!"  
"I asked you, I said…"  
"I know. I nearly—nearly—"  
Smith could taste the indrawn breath, the hesitation.  
"I thought they were Heydrich's men at first. Thomas spotted the _Leibstandarte_ insignia, then Michael Wittmann drove us to the rocket. Peiper, of course, he met us at the airfield. We're in…oh, God-knows-where…I just told the girls it's a holiday and Thomas is too busy making eyes at Fraülein Silke Eight-Years-His-Senior-and-Totally-Unsuitable to worry too much and—oh, God, I'm babbling, aren't I?"  
The words emerged in a torrent. John Smith forced out a laugh.  
"Surely the _Führer_ 's own bodyguard are safe?" Helen whispered.  
He nodded, forgetting in his relief that she was unable to see the gesture, wondering whether she saw it anyway.  
"I think so," he concluded. "Keep them safe, Helen."  
"Always."  
The click felt solid, loud as a gunshot in the empty hospital corridor. John Smith dashed his eyes on his sleeve and returned to the ward.  


"Let us suppose that I know who will stage the next attempt on the _Führer_ 's life."  
"Name your price and be done with it, Reinhard."  
The door handle felt slippery in his fingers. This was an old quarrel then, the pupil lording his skills over those of the master.  
"He will," said Heydrich.  
The traitor pointed a single, long finger at John Smith's heart.  
"I am loyal to the Reich," Smith began hotly.  
He had planned for this. Whatever moves Heydrich had left, there was nothing for it but to see the plan through. The lock clicked softly as he made his first stride.  
"As was _Fräulein_ Braun," Heydrich agreed pleasantly, "National Socialism demands that the terminally ill are euthanaised when they become mentally or physically incapacitated. Yet she was executed, while her husband survived."  
Although he made no other motion, Heydrich's index finger tracked Smith's progress around the room with all the weight of a swivelling tank gun.  
"Who is _Fräulein_ Braun?" he enquired.  
Smith felt the other three fingers of Heydrich's fist close around his heart and squeeze. The words trickled from his lips, bubbling out with a last gasp of air. Himmler laughed shortly.  
"It hardly matters now, does it?"  
"And why should this concern me?" Smith continued.  
"One rule for the _Führer_ and another for the rest of us," said Heydrich.  
"Were you hoping to finally eradicate that nasty little secret of yours, Reinhard?"  
Heydrich met his superior's eyes.  
"I have no secrets."  
"There are whispers," countered Himmler. "I should know, I helped silence them. But our _Führer_ tires of his old sins…"  
"The _Führer_ closed Pandora's box while I was of use to him! Now that I am not, he wishes to open it again!"  
For all the smooth confidence of his voice, the _Oberstgruppenführer_ 's cheeks had turned the same shade as his bedsheets. The _Reichsführer-SS_ gazed at him dispassionately.  
"Is this when you threaten to drag me into the depths of Hell with you?" he sighed.  
"Of course," Heydrich stated.  
"How are you going to manage that? I'm not the one with a Jewish grandfather."  
"Who is more guilty, the semite who spent his life in an SS uniform, or the SS officer who conspired to hide him?"  
John Smith felt himself slide against the wall. A small corner of him noted that the _Reichsführer-SS_ had left the room, shouting for the _Leibstandarte_. The rest of him was dizzy with the enormity of it, a man believing all his life in a flat Earth confronted by a first sight of curvature. The Reich's renaissance man, the pinnacle of Aryan superiority, the idol of SS officers in three continents…and he ought to be nothing but dust in a Cincinnati gas chamber. The _Führer_ had agreed to Heydrich's deception, he realised suddenly. It was the SS who had fallen for it…and John Smith most of all. He was the one who had fallen so eagerly that first time, so recklessly, stripped of his uniform, with his legs parted, with blood on his hands and ashes tangled in his hair.  
"I do not appear to be at risk of an… _oceanic experience_."  
The prone figure nodded in John Smith's direction.  
"Unlike someone, hmm?"  
"It was unpleasant enough hearing one semite gush over me," he snarled.  
"Ah, yes. You're an angel, according to the Resistance."  
His prisoner's eyes gleamed.  
"Not the first time that they called you that, is it?"  
John Smith shrugged, carefully. Much to his surprise, the _Obergruppenführer_ found that his legs would support him after all.  
"That was a long time ago," he managed.  
He clenched his hands behind his back.  
"A lifetime," he babbled. "I was a dead man."  
_It was your fault that time too,_ he thought. For one wild moment he wanted to blurt it out. He ventured to Heydrich's bedside instead.  
"How many lives?" Heydrich said softly. "I asked you that once."  
"My loyalty has no price, _Herr Oberstgruppenführer_ ," he snapped.  
Yet he felt the colour rush to his cheeks, as surely as if Heydrich had bent him over his knee, as if each word struck like the leather of Heydrich's belt had on his arse.  
" _Ihrer Ehre heißt Treue!_ " Heydrich sneered.  
"Yes," he stated. "My honour is true."  
He risked a glance at Heydrich's eyes.  
"Is the SS oath worth more than your son?"  
The basilisk stare held him trapped, motionless. As helpless as the nurse, earlier.  
"How do you know about Thomas?"  
Laughter flickered in Heydrich's eyes, never reaching the hard corners of his mouth.  
"You were late, that day. I telephoned your wife to ask where you were."  
"I suppose that the Hippocratic oath suddenly lost its importance when Doctor Adler found you in his office."  
"Of course."  
"Did Adler live to regret his actions?"  
The broad shoulders lifted.  
"When you fail to declare your son's illness and smuggle him to the Neutral Zone, will Adler testify, is that what you mean?"  
Smith nodded.  
"No."  
"Is it a stretch to imagine that the dead man's files are missing?"  
"With your fingerprints all over his office, too," Heydrich confirmed.  
"It doesn't matter that your wore gloves. Unless you killed the nurse as well."  
The amusement finally trickled from Heydrich's eyes into his grin.  
"I think forensics will find that your _Hauptsturmführer_ Connolly did any killing. The poor man must have thrown himself from the balcony of your office in guilt. Or you threw him off to prevent him reporting your orders. It really doesn't matter."  
The _Obergruppenführer_ swept the glass from the bedside table. It shattered against the wall with satisfying force. If only he hadn't killed Connolly! But it was no use longing for this to be anything more than Smith's word against Heydrich's.  
"If I don't kill the _Führer_ , then you set me up, is that it?"  
"A son you'll never bury, daughters blemished with a traitor's surname, a grieving widow without even an SS pension…"  
Smith bit the inside of his cheek until blood flowed. He had thought that he knew how to hate, before today. He stared at Heydrich's catheter, wishing that it were poison flowing into him rather than blood.  
"Don't think about it, John. Think about what will happen after you kill the _Führer_."  
The _Führer_. Had Erich given him the letter? Nothing else mattered, if only he could get Heydrich to ensnare himself a little more. The rage in his chest sparked into hope.  
"How long will you give me with Thomas?" he asked.  
"However long you need," Heydrich shrugged. "Take your twenty-five year long service leave early. When you return, _Reichsführer-SS_ Himmler will have earned his retirement."  
"Is that supposed to compensate me for losing my son?"  
"It might keep you sufficiently occupied to dull the grief. Your family will enjoy moving to Berlin, I think."  
"Is that why _Reichsminister_ Goebbels replaced _Heil Hitler_ with _Sieg Heil_ after the war? I suppose we all knew that Hitler would die eventually."  
Heydrich smiled.  
"The _Führer_ 's life or that of your son! Choose, John."  
His heart contracted in his chest, until Smith feared that it might stop altogether. Then it hammered against his ribcage as if fighting imprisonment.  
"I have another son," he whispered.  
Then he left the room to summon Himmler. Thomas Smith's and Joe Blake's images lingered at the corners of his vision like phantoms.  


Unlocking his door, Smith ordered his thoughts. Either he would succeed in his loyalty to the Führer, or he would be executed for it. Would his life flash before his eyes, as so many men claimed when they were no longer men, merely husks waiting for the executioner? He ought to know. He remembered when he had first set eyes upon Lucifer and the Angel of the Abyss. Appropriately, he had been kneeling abeyance in the snow.  
  


"Safest to kill them all and be done with it. Once the supply of men dwindles, the Resistance will come to a natural extinction."  
"Safe, certainly. But slow! What better way to capture these partisans than with their own men, _mein Reichsführer_?"  
The image of Aryan splendour and his short, unassuming superior had walked amongst the prisoners and the dead.  
"Whether or not your hypothesis is correct is immaterial, Reinhard. The Führer will never permit you to—"  
"Substantiate it?"  
A shared laugh, a knife-bright smile, a glance at the devil's right-hand man from behind rimless glasses.  
"— _Test_ , my dear Reinhard. All things must be tested to failure, after all."  
"A wager, then, _mein Reichsführer_  ?"  
But the colourless bureaucrat had turned away. Wordlessly, he inspected the line of captives lined up for execution.  
"It is the German custom to salute with one's surname and rank before a senior officer," Himmler had said curtly.  
"Name and rank!" their _Rottenführer_ had bellowed.  
Some had spat into the snow at Heinrich Himmler. Others had pleaded for mercy. Whatever was left of him had saluted. It made no difference. Their SS captors had lined up with rifles at the ready. Himmler and Heydrich had exchanged words, the _Reichsführer-SS_ had raised a hand and the _Obergruppenführer_ stepped forward with his own pistol—  
—and offered it to the excuse for a man kneeling in the snow.  
"Shoot them yourself," he had said, coldly.  
The pitiful excuse had hesitated.  
"Should you not, we won't either. Your men will be spared their lives, marched off to the crematoria…and incinerated quite conscious."  
He barely remembered how the pistol had felt. Or how it had sounded, when he had shot his men…the Americans, the enemy…kneeling before him. His hands had shook, at first. Before he had mastered himself, sometimes he had missed the skull entirely and hit the neck instead.  
"May—may—Will someone reload for me, please?"  
Heydrich had reclaimed his pistol and left his experiment's poor marksmanship where it lay, paralysed and bleeding.  
"Leave them. Consider it an exercise in accuracy," Heydrich had said curtly.  
"Your exercise in accuracy needs a name, Reinhard."  
Heydrich had hauled the not-quite-prisoner he had been to his feet. There had been a cut on his cheek, pouring arrogance instead of blood.  
"It needs a name, a resident's licence and a barracks. Someone find this thing a uniform and enough soup to prevent fainting in lectures. Drown its lice. Should you find any unit tattoos, flay then off."  
The long fingers about his collar had dropped him again.  
"Oh, stop laughing, _mein Reichsführer_. I give you my word, that inside of a year my experiment will take the oath and become one of us!"  
The _Obergruppenführer_ had spared his superior a glance from inspecting the filth on his fingernails.  
"Well, never one of us, never a true German, but a loyal servant of the _Reich_ nonetheless," he corrected.  
"I'll believe that when I see it, hmmm? What a sight that will be! _SS-Sturmann_ John Smith."  
  


The letter waited for him on the side-table. Heydrich's handwriting. He dropped it like a grenade, yanked his Luger from its holster and swept the house. Everything was precisely as it ought to be: his son's textbooks stacked on his desk, his eldest daughter's sheet music propped against the piano, his youngest's drawings stuck on the refrigerator, his wife's scent on their sheets. Everything was there except for them. Of course. Peiper had been ordered to pick them up this morning. Was that really only twelve hours ago? But Joachim Peiper was married to Himmler's daughter, had been talking to Helen on that very topic when he had telephoned. Smith calculated furiously. Even if the _Führer_ had mobilised Peiper's unit personally, there wasn't enough time to make Berlin-New York-Traves-New York: the rocket flights alone would take eleven hours. Peiper must have already been in New York, must have come over with— Himmler had taken Heydrich into custody _and Peiper had released him_. John Smith bolted for the telephone, shouted down the operator and asked to speak to the _Reichsführer-SS_. Two rings. Three. It was all far too late, of course. He flipped over the note.  
_Consider my offer, John. I do hope that you manage to sleep on it, in that cold, empty bed of yours._

**Author's Note:**

>   * Heydrich's file is all based upon the "accomplishments" of the historical Heydrich. While he wasn't actually Jewish (his grandmother remarried after Heydrich's grandfather died, never converting) there was enough circumstantial evidence for Heydrich's and Himmler's enemies to accuse the two of them of a cover-up in our timeline).
>   * The song quoted by Smith is (a version of) lyrics to the "Colonel Bogey March," better known as "Hitler only has one ball." Göring was actually the Nazi with one ball, having been shot in his testes, as per the original lyrics.
>   * In S1E1, the Lariat manager says that Joe "was still sucking [his] mother's tit when they dropped the bomb," despite the fact that he's just heard that Joe is 27. (Bomb dropped in 1962-27=1935, clearly impossible.) Yet in S1E6, we hear that VA Day celebrates the capitulation of the US government in 1947 after two years of fighting: 1947-2=1945.) So I'll assume that the bomb was dropped in 1945 and that someone can't add, rather than that Joe is supposed to be 17.
>   * In another case of pilot oddities, Smith is a _Brilliantentrager_ , wearing the equivalent of _four_ Medals of Honour or three Victoria Crosses. Afterwards, he's downgraded to the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross. It is still weird that he has frontline-combat decorations... That led me to think that Heydrich needed to award him a medal for something, but couldn't disclose what, hence his awful and typically English-spy-novel-like plan of turning the leader of the Resistance into a Nazi and making him return to mop up all of his old connections.
> 


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Kriegsspiel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8847634) by [Madchen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madchen/pseuds/Madchen)




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